Idlewild: Warnings/Promises : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Idlewild have been one of the U.K.'s most consistently ace bands for years now, despite the distance they've advanced since the boyishly emotive punk rock of early records such as Hope Is Important and 100 Broken Windows. Lead singer Roddy Woomble has grown up in public, a Scottish indie-rock sweater boy with a penchant for Smiths-style poetic introspection, an enviable collection of long scarves and a voice as shaggy as his mane. Idlewild finally scored their U.K. commercial breakthrough with their previous album, 2002's The Remote Part, but Warnings/Promises is even better, a set of hopeless love songs for sad-eyed city girls. It begins amiably with the anthemic single "Love Steals Us From Loneliness." But the bleak emotional terrain of "As If I Hadn't Slept," "Too Long Awake" and "Disconnected" is definitely Idlewild's home turf.